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The author's partner Simon stands amongst the ruins of the Sanctuary of Diktynna.Jessica Allen/Jessica Allen

Not much remains of the Sanctuary of Diktynna. The ruins of its blue-and-white marble temple at the tip of a rugged peninsula in western Crete honour a goddess who threw herself into the sea to escape a lustful man, the legendary King Minos.

The first time my partner Simon and I visited Greece’s largest island, the combination of terrifying roads and our rental car’s low undercarriage kept us from completing what, at that time, didn’t seem like much of a meaningful pilgrimage. We just really wanted to end our outing with what our trusty Blue Guide promised was a “memorable swim” in the crystal blue waters of Menies Bay.

But a year later, I was determined to explore the ancient site dedicated to this derivative of the Minoan Mother Goddess who, in Euripides’s day, had morphed into a local variant of Artemis.

It wasn’t that a lot had changed in that year. It seemed that everything, however, had changed in the mere days since we had left home. Our vacation, a journey designed to connect with the past, coincided with the first allegations about Harvey Weinstein, a powerful man who, many millennia after Minos, was accused of pursuing women with the same relentlessness.

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The Sanctuary of Diktynna is located on the hill to the south of the beach in the bay of Menies.JeanBienvenu/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Every time we had WiFi we checked in to the escalating saga, torn between a responsibility to keep up with this epoch-defining news and the desire to get away from it by retreating to the past. I found myself silently scrutinizing items and moments during the trip with a new filter, such as the Amazons on 2,500-year-old vases we gazed at through museum glass, or a tree we saw a few days earlier in Gortyn, the ancient Roman capital of Crete some 200 kilometres away. Legend has it that underneath it, Zeus, Minos’ father, raped Europa, his mother, and that ever since the tree has refused to shed its leaves.

I was resolved to reach Diktynna’s sanctuary, her most important place of worship – and she was worshipped in Athens, Sparta and as far away as Marseilles. We needed to finish what we’d started.

Although we never got out of second gear during the hour-long, 20-kilometre trek – which awarded us views of the mirror-like sea flashing under the autumn sun, Mars-like terrain and many goats ��� we made it. Our knuckles were white and our legs were shaking on account of switchbacks along the rocky road, which included stretches that the Romans paved some 2,000 years ago, but we succeeded, with an intact undercarriage to boot.

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Accessing the archaeological site is free, though the journey involves journeys on Roman roads built 2,000 years ago.

They say that hounds as fierce as bears once guarded the sanctuary where Diktynna was worshipped as early as the 6th century BC. Now, there was a lone wild donkey who seemed annoyed to have company.

We hopscotched over chunks of capitals and columns erected during the reign of Hadrian, but now scattered in what looked like a Cyclops’s game of dominoes. Although the place has been looted for centuries, we found bits of engraved marble and pottery shards that past visitors had thoughtfully arranged on top of rocks. And then we stripped down to our underwear and had that swim, which was memorable.

After we dried off under the sun and headed back to the car, I asked Simon to give me a minute alone. I needed to climb back up to the sanctuary to walk on that ancient hallowed ground one last time. As I stood there, I wondered if this was where Diktynna threw herself into the sea to escape Minos’s unwanted advances. Was the bay below the same one where fishermen saved her in their nets? Was this sanctuary where she determined to live a chaste life, free of men? No, because Diktynna isn’t real. Neither is Zeus or Minos. But the fact is that men have been pathologically pursuing women for a while now.

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The blue and white marble temple is now just ruins.

And then I laughed because here I was on the cusp of having what many might call a spiritual moment. It was funny because I’m not what you’d call spiritual, or at least the modern brand of spiritualism that’s often marketed toward women. I bristle at magazine features on what jeans to wear according to your Zodiac sign and I’m frustrated that many women, who are targeted by the multibillion-dollar wellness industry which sells them snake oil – even if it is “detoxifying” – lap it up.

None of my friends who carry crystals in their pockets are men. But in this moment, up there high on a cliff surrounded by the sea, where a woman had been worshipped and as women’s collective rage stormed, it felt silly to quibble about rose quartz.

Standing there among the once-sacred ruins that generation after generation of men have come to pick apart, I did something I never thought I’d do: I stuffed a pebble-sized piece of blue marble into my pocket and embraced the goddess.

Getting there

Air Canada Rouge offers direct seasonal flights from Toronto to Athens. Once in Greece, you can catch cheap and frequent one-hour flights to Chania, Crete, via Ryan Air and Aegean Airlines. There is no shortage of affordable Airbnbs in the area, including entire villas, or try the charming Alcanea Boutique Hotel in Old Chania beside the Venetian harbour. From Chania, where the Archaeological Museum displays both a bust of Hadrian found in 1913 at the Sanctuary of Diktynna and a statue of the goddess herself with a hound, you can rent a car and drive 50 kilometres up the Rodopos Peninsula to the archaeological site, which is free. You’ll most likely be the only visitor there. Pro tip: Punch in “Menies Bay” into your offline Google map, rather than “Diktynna Sanctuary,” or else you may end up in the Sea of Crete.

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